Heather Ashwill

Safety and risk manager, City of Central Point

Responsibilities and accomplishments include:

  • Ashwill oversees the safety program for the City of Central Point, which serves nearly 20,000 residents. The safety program includes the police department, public works, planning, parks and recreation, information technology, finance, and administration.
  • Under Ashwill’s leadership, for the fiscal year 2023-2024, all of the city’s employees completed their annual safety trainings one month earlier than they were due.
  • She developed an annual safety training program that uses a variety of tools, including on-line and in-person training.
  • Ashwill created a user-friendly near-miss report form for employees to report near misses so those incidents can be corrected to help prevent accidents and injuries.
  • She was instrumental in securing funding for Sidewinder lights that can be attached to police officers’ uniforms so they can identify potential safety hazards they may encounter while on the job.

The most important thing I’ve learned about safety and health is:

Safety is all about people. Make no mistake about that. Every safety decision or new process requires buy-in to be successful. What I have found is strictly top-down decisions don’t always work out the way they were intended. If you want to see meaningful change and buy-in for your safety initiatives, make sure you are involving employees in the process and leaving plenty of room for their valuable input.

Your employees, safety committees, and project-based groups are going to be the true shining stars in your organization that help these processes gain momentum. By ensuring people are able to actively contribute, there will be a difference in commitment to safe work practices, and you are allowing employees to have ownership of a positive safety culture they are helping nurture along.

My best advice for workplace safety and health practitioners is:

Strive for progress, not perfection. It may seem a great idea to have the overarching goal of achieving a state of perfection, but it is a fallacy in the safety world. Make sure the immediate goals you set are realistic and achievable. By focusing on making continuous improvements over time, even if taking baby steps at first, you are doing a far greater service to not only employees and your organization but the larger safety community as well.

On the part of the safety community, my advice would extend toward strong support of joining a safety group, such as the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP). As a newer member of the safety profession, I cannot express enough the important role that membership has played in my growth as a safety leader. As a member of the Southern Oregon Chapter ASSP, I have been able to find invaluable support and learn from other dedicated safety professionals in my region. Through active participation, you will connect with other passionate safety leaders working together to ensure a safer, stronger future for all.